The Chosen One
by nightwalker3
Summary: Enma wants to start another apocalypse, Koenma wants to stop him, and Yuusuke's almost as awesome in person as he was in the stories.


Notes: OT4 apocalypse fic.

* * *

><p><strong>The Chosen One<strong>

* * *

><p>It will end like this.<p>

Sensui closes his eyes for a long moment, feeling wind and rain against his face, reveling in the moment. He spreads his wings against the wind and imagines the storm pulling him off the earth, crushing his body against the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. He feels rested at the thought. Death is his reward, after all.

He opens his eyes and watches the human boy. Easy to forget that this Chosen One, this child, is a product of their new world; a child-soldier born in the aftermath of the greatest destruction since Jehovah's vast flood. Even against the wasted landscape of scarred rock and crumbling concrete, the twisted, rusted metal spires of the ancient city clawing at the sky behind him, the boy does not seem particularly young or vulnerable. Part of that is his size; a large young man, even by the standards of the old world, nearly six and a half feet tall and broad shouldered. He looks like he could bench-press a car and in fact Sensui is confident he could do so. He looks half a decade older than he is, an illusion that is only magnified by the look in his eyes. The boy may not remember it, but he has seen and done things far more impressive than any thing Sensui has shown him.

He doesn't know the boy's name. It hardly matters. He knows who the boy used to be and that gives him hope that this will end well.

There is a flash of color against one of the ruined skyscrapers, a brilliant red against ruined steel, and Sensui cannot stop himself from tensing as the boy looks over his shoulder and finds Kurama's distant form with instant, unerring accuracy.

The boy may not remember, but that makes him the only one. And if Kurama is here, that means Urameshi, and likely Hiei, are not far behind.

Time to begin.

* * *

><p>Kurama pauses at the foot of the incline and watches the two men watching him.<p>

He spares Sensui only a brief, cursory glance, noting the wings and the distinct lack of reiki. His enemy does not react to Kurama's approach, and Kurama does not expect an attack. This battle isn't about either one of them, after all. This is about the boy.

Their Chosen One.

Kurama lets his mouth curl into a small smile as he watches the young man standing a few meters away from Sensui. He looks strong, and healthy, and completely pissed off at being dragged into the rain and ruins in the middle of the night.

Hiei drops out of the sky at the top of the incline, right at the edge of the cliff, and Sensui actually blinks in surprise at the fire demon's sudden entrance. Hiei's hair is wilder than usual in the heavy wind, but he's dry from head to toe and Kurama shakes his head at the shameless indulgence. Hiei is worse than a cat.

The boy – the young man, Kurama chides himself – watches Hiei warily but doesn't otherwise react. He does plant his feet more firmly on the ground and cross his arms over his chest. It should have looked defensive, but Kurama can read impatience in that posture.

Yuusuke steps up beside Kurama and shakes rain out of his hair. "Fucker," he says to Sensui without heat. "You couldn't have done this indoors? Postponed because of inclement weather? Brought umbrellas?"

Hiei snorts and a flare of youki bursts in the air, brushing over each of them, evaporating the rain in a wide dome that just barely covers all five of them. "Better?"

"Much," Yuusuke says. "Dude. Teach me how to do that."

"Sure," Hiei says. "First, be born a fire demon."

"Damn," Yuusuke said. "Always a fucking catch." He runs a hand through his hair and grins at the young man they are there to fight for. "Hey."

Their Chosen One – all capital letters, because Koenma was rather pretentious that way – stopped tugging at his suddenly dry clothes to eye them all warily. "Hey."

Yuusuke plants his hands on his hips and jerks his chin at Sensui. "So, how much has he told you?"

"Not much." There's a hint of a lie in there, one Kurama might have missed from someone else. Sensui has told the boy something, but the boy hasn't made up his mind about the information he has been given. That could be a good sign, and Kurama exchanges a glance with Hiei.

The rules are simple, but that leaves room for interpretation. They are not allowed to lie – not that the three of them would, and Kurama has always believed that Sensui, for all his insanity, was never a dishonest man. They are not allowed to force, threaten or coerce. They cannot involve any other human. All they can do is offer the Chosen One a choice. And then the Chosen One will choose, and all three worlds will live with the consequences.

Kurama has faith. Not in any god or the forces of fate or destiny. But the young man before him is worthy of the responsibility he is being given.

"So let's do this," Yuusuke says.

Sensui's now-dry wings flutter slightly against the wind as he tips his head toward the Chosen One. "From the beginning, then. You are the Chosen One, hand-picked by the King of Heaven, the Prince of Hell and the Lord of Demons, to decide the fate of humankind."

The Chosen One narrows his eyes briefly. "And who do you represent, exactly?"

Sensui only nods his head. "I am the representative of the King of Heaven."

The boy glances at them next, so Kurama takes a small step forward and offers, "The Lord of Demons sent Hiei and myself in his place."

"The Prince of Hell picked my name out of a hat," Yuusuke says in a confidential tone, destroying the brief solemnity of the moment and they can see the flash of humor in the Chosen One's eyes.

"What's this choice?" the boy asks. "What am I supposed to be the Chosen One of?"

"The great destruction," Sensui says serenely. "Heaven is preparing to send another great destruction."

The boy jerks away from Sensui like the angel was about to explode. "Here?" he demands. "Again? We won't survive another – we barely survived the first one!"

"Not here," Sensui says. "The demon world."

The Chosen One hesitates, obviously not expecting that. "Why?"

"Balance," Sensui says. "Have the demons not plagued humanity every moment since the first great destruction? Do they not swarm through your world in packs, hunting your fellow mortals for food and sport? Do they not press at the borders of your village as we speak, under the cover of the storm, kept at bay only by the strength of your friends and family? Humanity cannot rebuild like this. But if balance is restored, if the demonkind were to face the same circumstances your kind has, then humanity would have a fighting chance. You could rest, rebuild, raise your families in peace and relative safety."

"What do you need me for?" the boy asks.

"You're the one who decides, on behalf of all humanity, whether Heaven sends the next great destruction against the demon world," Kurama explains.

"Me," the boy says with a flat tone of disbelief that makes Yuusuke grin. "What jackass decided to dump all this on me?"

"The three ruling deities came to a mutual agreement," Sensui tells him.

"Hey, hey, hey," Yuusuke interrupts, planting his hands on his hips and frowning with an earnestness that was only half false. "The Demon Lord is no deity, and he doesn't appreciate being lumped in with the King of Assholes and the Prince of Bureaucracy. Thank you."

The Chosen One slides a sideways glance at Yuusuke, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, and Kurama's chest hurts at the way Yuusuke smiles back. "So what's the catch? Besides being the one to condemn most of a world to death, that is."

"You have to do it," Yuusuke explains. "The destruction. If you want it, you have to do it yourself."

The young man raises an eyebrow at this, but he doesn't seem surprised. He almost seems to have expected something along those lines. "I'm supposed to wipe out five-sixths of the demon world with my bare hands?"

Hiei shifts his weight. "You have power you haven't tapped yet. It would be easier than you think."

"Uh-huh." The boy seems to think about that for a moment. "So what's the other catch?"

"Exile," Kurama says gently. "The human world is the King of Heaven's domain. If you refuse to bring the destruction, it will be seen as siding with the Demon Lord and you'll be exiled from this world. Probably forever."

It also means his only choices are either suicide or a lifetime in the demon world. The look on his face suggests that he isn't sure which would be worse. "So you're here to talk me out of it?" the young man asks.

Yuusuke tips his head to the side and regards him solemnly. "Do I need to?"

The Chosen One watches him for a long, heavy moment, and Kurama can taste reiki in the air, lighting and rain together as Yuusuke's reiki and the boy's kick off sparks against each other before sliding smoothly against each other.

And it's like dominos falling in a row, everything sliding into position with an almost physical feeling of relief, a broken bone being set with one sharp moment of pain, and then the promise of it growing stronger than it had been before.

The Chosen One is staring at Yuusuke now with an expression Kurama can't quite read, but he shakes his head. "No. The demon beasts plague our villages, but the youkai are just like people. Some are bad, some aren't, and I've met men as bad as any of them. If the King of Heaven wants another massacre, he can do it himself."

"Will your family understand?" Sensui asks, his voice sympathetic. "That you chose the demons over their own safety?"

The boy's face hardens briefly. "My family wouldn't understand me committing wholesale slaughter."

"So be it," Sensui says, and if his tone of voice is defeated, Kurama can see the flare of victory in the angel's eyes. "The King of Heaven will do as he sees fit from here out."

The Chosen One frowns at him. "Wait. Are you saying that he could send the destruction anyway?"

Hiei snorts. "Technically. There's nothing to stop him from trying this all over again."

"But not anytime soon," Kurama reassures him. "It took fifty years for the three rulers to agree on a Chosen One. If the King of Heaven wants to try again he'll have to wait for another consensus."

The Chosen One made a face. "That's great. All this for what basically amounts to a stay of execution."

"You did the right thing," Kurama says quietly.

"I know that," the boy says. "But it would have been nice if the King of Heaven wasn't such a dickhead."

Sensui's eyes widen in what can only be described as delight, while Yuusuke throws his head back and laughs.

Hiei and Kurama exchange a glance, then Hiei is gone, his youki flickering away behind him like a smoke trail.

The barrier between them and the rain vanishes and Yuusuke shouts indignantly as the rain crashes down on them, freezing cold and mixed with hail. "Fucker! You could have warned us!"

* * *

><p>"Why did he want to lose?" The Chosen One asks them later, when they are in the demon world and making their way to Yuusuke's stronghold.<p>

"He was a slave," Yuusuke says. "He did something – tried to do something – that was kind of shitty, and the King of Heaven made him pay for it. He wanted to defend the demon world. So, having to talk you into destroying it was his punishment."

The Chosen One nods and shivers in his wet clothes. "So, when I said the King of Heaven was a dickhead…?"

"You weren't overstating the case," Kurama says dryly.

"Why me?" the boy asks, and there's a strange weight to his question this time. "What about me made me the one who got to decide this?"

Kurama holds out a hand and after a brief hesitation, the boy takes it. There's a moment, like back in the ruins, where his reiki flashes against Kurama's youki, then familiarity settles over them and the boy stares as his spiritual energy and Kurama's demon energy settle against each other.

Yuusuke lays his hand atop both of theirs, and the boy shudders as Yuusuke's reiki crawls over his hand and arm like electricity, sinking into the skin. "If I tell you that you were a ringer, are you going to get pissed?"

The boy is staring at their hands with an expression Kurama recognizes from a lifetime ago, an inward focus that means he is seeing something the rest of them can't, focused on senses neither Kurama nor Yuusuke have. "You know me," he says and shudders again as Yuusuke's youki flares briefly. "That-" the boy swallows. "How long have you been waiting for me?"

"A lot longer than fifty years," Yuusuke says with a tired laugh. "When the King of Heaven – Enma – decided he wanted to waste the demon world-"

"Not for the first time," Kurama sighs.

"-his kid, Koenma, the Prince of Hell, stalemated him. Koenma's not as powerful as his dad, but he's no lightweight, and when the Demon Lord-"

"Yuusuke," Kurama explains, grinning when the young man's eyes widened comically and he turned a gaze on Yuusuke that clearly said he found the Lord of Demons less impressive in person than in the stories.

"Don't look at me like that. I'll have you know I am awesome," Yuusuke said. "Anyway, Koenma told me what the deal was and since I didn't have a better plan, or, well, any kind of a plan at all that didn't involve a full-blown war, we came up with the Chosen One thing."

"And what?" The Chosen One asks. "Just stalled for fifty years until I came along?"

"Basically," Yuusuke says. "We didn't know – we hoped – God, we thought your soul had been destroyed in the great destruction." His grip on their hands tightens almost uncomfortably, but the boy doesn't seem to notice. "We looked. I promise. If you ever remember us, I want you to know we looked for you. We didn't ever stop."

Yuusuke's reiki is crackling around them like summer lightning and the soulbond is there, so close beneath the surface. Kurama can feel it under his skin and at the back of his mind, a drugged thing, weakened by the years of separation and the lack of memory. He wishes Hiei were there, but the fire demon's youki lingers on all three of them from the barrier, enough to satisfy the soulbond.

It almost hurts. Kurama feels like something is trying to crawl out of his skin, but he can live with it. It had been worse, much worse, for the many decades after the great destruction.

Yuusuke almost vibrates with grief and longing and a sharp-edged almost brutal satisfaction. His relief is overwhelming and Kurama can taste desire and need, ruthlessly suppressed as Yusuuke shifts his hand to grip the young man's wrist, his fingers over the pulse point, counting the quickening beats of a heart that match Kurama's perfectly and will until one or both of them die again. "I want you to remember us."

Kurama can feel the brush of a mind against his, confusion roiling beneath the surface as the Chosen One tries to reconcile what his senses are telling him. He's shaking with the same almost desperate need that Kurama and Yuusuke feel, but there is an edge to it.

"Enma," the young man says slowly, forcing himself to focus on something outside of the soulbond. "Does he know who I am?"

"No," Kurama says. "Koenma presented you to him as just another human, albeit one with potential for great power. Had you sided with Enma, your spiritual abilities would have been pushed to their full potential so you could unleash the destruction with your own hand."

"It's possible that would have jogged your memory," Yuusuke adds, pulling his hand away and taking a deliberate step back to give the human some room to think. "It was a fall back plan. If you had lost your fucking mind enough to side with Enma-"

"Jeez, have some confidence in me, why don't you?" the human demands

"-then getting your powers back so suddenly might have knocked you out of it and given us one last chance to avert another destruction." Yuusuke shrugs his shoulders and visibly forces himself to look away. "We didn't think it would come to that, though."

"Can you do that?" the human asks. "Push my powers? If that will make me remember…"

"No guarantees that it will work," Yuusuke says with a careless shrug. "And it probably wouldn't be a pleasant process. We're talking a lot of power, dude. You used to be pretty kickass."

The human narrows his eyes. "Used to be?"

"Trust me on this one," Yuusuke says. "In your last life you had the kind of power that even demon lords respected. Well. Other demon lords. I kicked your ass on a daily basis."

"And we were friends?" the human asks skeptically.

"Yeah," Yuusuke says, not looking at either one of them. "We'd have died for you, if we could have."

"And you looked for me."

"Yeah."

"The little guy in the dress, too?"

Yuusuke cracks up and Kurama rolls his eyes at them both. "Hiei, too."

"All right."

They are almost to the stronghold of the Third Kingdom when Yuusuke says, "So what's your name, anyway?"

"Kuwabara," the human says absently, then stops in his tracks.

Yuusuke laughs. "You're going to remember," he says, the soulbond flaring into life like a phoenix that had finally nosed its way out of the ashes. He moves with demon speed and the kiss he presses onto Kuwabara is fierce, invasive and almost brutal in his relief. "You're going to remember."

Kuwabara hesitates for a moment, looking down into Yuusuke's eyes, glancing at Kurama who waits patiently for him to decide. "The little guy in the dress, too?" he asks, and if he's genuinely curious, there's an undercurrent of humor there. He's not afraid of the answer. He's not afraid of them.

"Hiei isn't much for group activities," Kurama says.

"I'm oddly relieved to hear that," Kuwabara says. "I can… hear him. Not any more or less than you, but there's not – If I don't touch you I think I'm going to be sick-"

"Touch me," Kurama says.

* * *

><p>When Kuwabara wakes up he can smell grass and electricity and brimstone. He cracks an eyelid and peers over Yuusuke's shoulder to see Hiei sitting on the windowsill.<p>

The fire demon has his katana drawn and is sitting sideways so he can watch the door and the window at once. Kuwabara blinks a little, his mind still clouded by sleep and the dizzying, disorienting rush of remembering a lifetime in less than one night, and realizes Hiei is keeping watch.

_Go back to sleep,_Hiei's thoughts brush against his, slipping through his shields with the ease of long familiarity.

Kuwabara thinks about arguing – he can recall that he and Hiei were very good at that – and suddenly misses the little pipsqueak, the relief at seeing him there hitting Kuwabara in the chest with a feeling not unlike getting the air knocked out of him.

Hiei narrows his eyes as the rush of sentimental emotion reaches him and Kuwabara chuckles. Yuusuke stirs slightly and buries his face against Kuwabara's shoulder, his breath warm on Kuwabara's skin. Kurama is slowly waking, Hiei's reiki and the sound of Kuwabara's voice pulling him out of sleep. Kuwabara lets his mind drift, his thoughts slipping against Kurama's, calming and reassuring. It wouldn't have worked if Kurama wasn't exhausted from repairing the soulbond, or if the extra person in the room had been anyone but Hiei, but Kurama stills and slips back into sleep.

He can feel his own eyes sliding closed and flickers a glance at Hiei, who has gone back to keeping watch. He feels tired, weak, strangely delicate, but already he can feel the soulbond tying them together, making him nearly as immortal as they are. He'll have to relearn his reiki, get his strength and power back so he won't be a weakness for them in the fight to come. And there will be a fight. Enma will try again.

Hiei meets his gaze for a solemn moment, catching the apprehension that pulses through him. Kuwabara wants to tell Hiei that he doesn't have to stand watch while the three of them sleep, especially since the soulbond would have taken as much out of Hiei as it did the rest of them. But it's good to know someone is on watch. And he doesn't think Hiei would leave anyway.

_You'll fill me in later?_Kuwabara asks and Hiei hesitates only a second before nodding agreement. There are nearly eight decades between Kuwabara's death at Enma's hands during the great destruction, and this night. There's a lot to cover, a lot to account for and more to make up for.

He's almost asleep again, his blood hot under his skin with slowly building reiki, Kurama's heartbeat against his back echoing his own, Yuusuke's breath tickling his throat and Hiei's thoughts in the back of his mind. _Welcome back._


End file.
